January 28, 2013
By Judith Aquino,

Twitter Rolls Out Transparency Site

Following the recent debut of its video sharing service, Vine, Twitter today launched a new site dedicated to transparency, where the public can find data related to information requests from government officials, copyright notices from content companies, and removal requests.

"We've been thinking about ways in which we can more effectively share this information, with an aim to make it more meaningful and accessible to the community at large," writes Jeremy Kessel, legal manager at Twitter, in a blog post announcing the site.

The company decided to unveil the site today, in honor of Data Privacy Day, Kessel adds.

According to the site, transparency.twitter.com, the social network has received 6,646 copyright notices, 1,858 government information requests, and 48 takedown requests since January 2012. Twitter says it will also include site accessibility data from its data gathering partner, Herdict.

For copyright notices, Twitter breaks down the data into the number of copyright takedown notices, percentage where material was removed, users/accounts affected, tweets withheld, and media withheld by month. It offers similar statistics for removal requests and divides the information requests by country.

The company, according to Kessel, is offering this information to "raise public awareness about these invasive requests" and to "enable policy makers to make more informed decisions." Twitter currently has more than 200 million members.